Focus

The Encyclical on Faith Has Already Been Painted, by Raphael

Instead of a new encyclical, Benedict XVI is writing the third volume of his trilogy on Jesus. With the Transfiguration on Tabor as its focal point. A liturgist and a theologian explain why

by Sandro Magister

ROME, August 10, 2010 – Four days ago, on the liturgical feast of the Transfiguration, "L'Osservatore Romano" again suggested that its readers look at the painting of the same name by Raphael, which it called "the most beautiful painting in the world."

The last work of the great painter, the "Transfiguration" was placed above the main altar of the Roman church of San Pietro in Montorio in 1520, and remained there until 1797, when it was taken to France by Napoleon.

It returned to Rome fifteen years later, and since then has been displayed in one of the halls of the Vatican Museum.

Monsignor Marco Agostini, an official in the second section of the secretariat of state, master of pontifical ceremonies, and a scholar of liturgy and sacred art, has rightly complained in "L'Osservatore Romano" that this improper placement deprives the painting of "three fourths of its capacity to speak."

Above the altar and during the Mass, in fact, the "Transfiguration" helped the priest and the faithful to "see" the mystery that was being celebrated, to identify in the consecrated white host the glorious Christ. This was why Raphael had conceived and painted it. While in a museum, this expressive power and liturgical function disappear.

In his commentary, Monsignor Agostino called attention to the figure at the center of the lower portion of Raphael's painting: the woman who, on her knees, is gesturing to the apostles to attend to the boy in the grip of an evil spirit and heal him with the power of faith.

Because the woman – who according to Raphael's initial plan was supposed to be the boy's mother – is precisely a personification of faith. A faith that overcomes the incredulity by which the apostles themselves are tempted. A faith luminous like the transfigured Christ, on whom everything is centered.

After the encyclicals on charity and hope, it is said that Benedict XVI is writing an encyclical on the other theological virtue, faith. In reality, that's not true. In Castel Gandolfo – where he went in early July, and will stay until October – the pope is instead writing the third part of his book "Jesus of Nazareth," dedicated to the infancy narratives in the Gospels.

The first of the three volumes was released in 2007. The second has already been brought to press, and will be released simultaneously in multiple languages during Lent of 2011.

It is important to emphasize that the Transfiguration of Jesus has a central place in the entire work. It is the endpoint for the first volume, and the starting point for the second, which is centered on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In the Transfiguration, in fact – Benedict XVI wrote in the first volume – "Jesus' divinity belongs with the cross." Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about the "necessity" of his passion. That mystery "which God predetermined before the ages" (1 Corinthians 2:7) is revealed in the crucified Christ.

It is no accident that in the famous mosaic in the apse of the fifth-century basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, in Ravenna, the transfigured Christ is represented by a large jeweled cross, against the background of a starry sky.

But also in the "Transfiguration" by Raphael, Jesus has his arms open as on the cross.

In addition to being the center of the evangelical narrative, therefore, the Transfiguration is also necessarily the focal point of any form of the theology that intends to explore the mystery of Christ.

And this is what was explained – a few days before the feast of the Transfiguration, and again in "L'Osservatore Romano" – by the theologian Inos Biffi in the masterful article reproduced below.

Monsignor Inos Biffi teaches in the theological faculties of Milan and Lugano. He is a specialist in medieval theology and has written the outlines for a few of Benedict XVI's Wednesday catecheses dedicated to the most representative figures of the Church of that period. His "opera omnia" is being published by Jaca Book.

In an era when new theologies are popping up to proclaim immodestly that they are refounding theological scholarship "ex novo" by bringing it into step with the times, the article by Inos Biffi shows how to recognize an authentic Christian theology.

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AN INFALLIBLE METHOD FOR RENEWING THEOLOGY

by Inos Biffi

If the Christian mystery stands at the origin of theology, and this can be defined as "understanding of the faith," it is unthinkable that at any point in time remaking it from scratch can be contemplated. In the diversity of the times, it is nourished by an uninterrupted tradition of content and also of language, which does not admit drastic and revolutionary discontinuities, on pain of losing its identity. It is permissible at least to harbor some perplexity before a theology convinced that it is presenting unusual and singular theological doctrines, never before taught.

Nevertheless, this does not doom theology to pure repetition. The history of theology itself shows how much, without breaking continuity, it has been variously and profoundly renewed: but not by somehow obscuring or ignoring the mystery; on the contrary, by allowing it to emerge with greater power and consistency.

Theology does not let itself be unsettled and influenced by the myth of becoming and progress, aware that it was born and is continually reborn from the inexhaustible and unchangeable resources of divine revelation, which is complete and does not wear out, from communion with the Word of God, ancient and always new.

It is also true that the renewal of theology can be accompanied by a new philosophy, but on the condition that it offer, so to speak, a space more open to the predominance and understanding of the mystery, and that it be exercised within the "understanding of the faith."

It is significant that the brilliant historian of medieval theology Marie-Dominique Chenu should affirm that "it is not the introduction of Aristotle that determines the thought of Saint Thomas, just as it is not the rebirth of Antiquity that constitutes the theology of the thirteenth century." The rebirth represents only one component of renewal: its impulse and its advance are attributed to "evangelism," as he calls it.

It goes without saying that it can never be philosophy that judges the validity of a theology: this judgment belongs only to the Word of God, while the same theology can judge the pertinence or lack thereof of a philosophy in contributing to the understanding of the faith.

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Here, however, we are not interested in illustrating the relationship between philosophy and Christian theology, but in indicating the decision through which theology could and should receive a profound renewal or new arrangement: a decision that is unavoidable, because it is founded on the event from which emerges the faith, and therefore the "understanding of the faith."

This way is Christocentrism.

Truly, this is by no means a novelty. Christian theology has always had Jesus Christ at its center; it was born and developed from the event that is him.

But perhaps this original centrality requires a more rigorous, more consistent, and more complete translation. Above all beginning with the very definition of Christocentrism.

This does not signify only the excellence of Christ with respect to all the rest, but his predestination to be the unconditional reason for all that which God has called and calls into existence.

But other indispensable and essential clarifications are required. When one speaks of Christocentrism, one intends to affirm not only the primacy of the Word, but also the primacy or "precedence" in God's plan of the incarnate Word, who died and was raised, through whom, in whom, and in view of whom "were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible" (Colossians 1:15-17). Obviously, as a complement rather than an alternative to the Johannine perspective, according to which there is nothing that has not been made through the Word (John 1:3).

The "Preeminent over all things" (Colossians 1:18) is, precisely, the glorified Crucified One, who comes before everything and from whom everything departs. It is as if to say that Jesus the redeemer, with the grace of his forgiveness, is the ontological foundation and the historical motive of all things (cf. Colossians 1:17), the Object of God's eternal "purpose."

The first letter of Peter speaks of the "the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb," "known before the foundation of the world," revealed in the final time" (1:19-20). And as for the prophets, it says that they were "investigating the time and circumstances that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the glories to follow them" (1:11).

But if Jesus risen from the dead is the Predestined One, this means the figure of humanity originally conceived and "preferred" by God is the glorified humanity of the Son, the achievement to which all of history is oriented.

In it, all humanity finds its rationale and model: all men are predestined, created "in grace," or "predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29).

We can define everything that we have described in the words of Paul: "the mystery of God that is Christ" (Colossians 2:2), or more precisely: "the wise mystery of God" that is "Christ crucified" (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:21,23).

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So then, the task of theology is the exploration of this mystery. Those who dedicate themselves to it have the mission of "speaking God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages" (1 Corinthians 2:7).

It is on this realism that Christian theology is built, with no interest in watering itself down in the world of hypothetical divine plans or designs. Only God knows what he could have done. Everything has been created in the grace of Jesus crucified and risen.

In particular, the nature of man was grounded on that grace. A "pure nature," for a "pure" and "natural" end, has never existed, and we can know nothing about it.

In fact, the "Original" that sacred doctrine intends to know above all, and therefore, the first object of theological interest, is the glorious Crucified One predestined from all time, and therefore, his life with its events, among which takes place the particularized manifestation of the eternal plan generated and motivated by the divine mercy.

In this sense, Christian theology is originally Christic: Christ risen from the dead describes and exhaustively offers all of his object. He is the Object that is to be understood, as the concrete and historical "narration" of the plan (cf. John 1:18). He is the dimension that Christology must take on.

But Christ does not stop at himself: he is the Son, and thus he refers to the Father, whom no one has seen and of whom he is the epiphany, and he is the attestation of the Spirit. In him is found the Trinity, which reveals itself as the creating and merciful Trinity, which stands at the origin of an order intended as an initiative of mercy.

This is the order that the theologian is called to study, which in particular concerns man, although he appears to be preceded, before his creation, by an angelic world already marked by Christ and by the decisions related to him: of acceptance, but also of rejection, or sin.

In particular, Christ unveils for us a God who, in his merciful love, gives the Son, predetermined as forgiveness for the sin of man, who in this way finds his advantage not in coming into the world, but in being redeemed. As Saint Ambrose writes, "Non prodesset nasci, nisi redimi profuisset" (Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, II, 41-42).

Sacred doctrine, then, deals with anthropology, meaning man as existing solely as disposed in the grace and glory of the Cross: a grace and a glory at work in the sacraments, which Thomas Aquinas sees entirely suspended in the "energy of the passion of Christ" (Summa Theologiae, III, 62, 5, c).

So it is easy to see what ecclesiology deals with: precisely with the humanity that emerges from the Passover of Christ and finds itself configured and intimately associated with the Lord risen from the dead.

As for eschatology, this is the exploration of the glory and therefore of the achievement of the Crucified One: a glory that transcends and attracts history and is the end for which man and together with him all things were created and desired from eternity.

If it is true that Christian theology has always done this, I would in any case maintain that is is possible, even necessary, to refocus this in an even more consistent and profound way on Christocentrism. It is only from here that a strong, admirable impulse of renewal could come, which would be sought in vain elsewhere.

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The Vatican newspaper in which the article by Inos Biffi was published, on July 27, 2010: